“The cloud” is one of my least favourite internet neologisms. It suggests something fluffy, white and weightless: a global atmosphere within which our email, social network profiles, images and shared files innocently drift. All of which sounds delightful – but the reality is that every cloud is composed of a vast infrastructure of bunker-like rooms, filled with rack upon rack of servers. And the moment you decide to upload something into this global data warehouse – be it photos of your family or precious documents – you give up many of your rights to ownership.

This summer, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak added his voice to the chorus of those alarmed by the implications of the cloud. “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be horrible problems in the next five years,” he opined on a trip to Washington. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away… the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”

Rights – and content creators’ lack of them – lie at the heart of cloud storage’s worst dangers, something connected in turn to the underlying nature of cloud storage. In the words of Douglas Heaven, writing in New Scientist, “a digital file exists as a state of matter… rather than matter itself.” Your information is not a piece of property in any legal sense. It’s merely the electrical state of a disk owned by somebody else; or, more likely, the state of a large number of different disks scattered across the world, each containing part or all of what may be numerous copies of your information, backed up and accessed and reproduced as necessary to ensure server-side efficiency.

Unfortunately for investors, demographically much of the developed world is in trouble. Japan, Europe and even the United States have seen declining fertility rates in recent decades. Today, all three regions are well below the 2.05 children per woman needed to sustain, let alone grow population. This same issue affects the developing world too. And China is the clear leader for a potential demographic crisis in the coming years.

Today China produces only 1.6 children per woman across the board. If you want to focus on the wealthier segments of the Chinese population, using Hong Kong as a proxy, the numbers are even worse. It is not coincidence that China intends to further loosen its “one child” policy and is also considering the closing of labor camps. Both are welcome developments even if the latter may not be a “done deal.” And both are designed to help boost China’s population.

China needs to produce, on average, 2.05 children per woman to maintain its population and support its ageing citizens. Anything lower then this means a slowdown economically in the future (no matter how much China improves productivity).

This issue also comes with geopolitical consequences. China is surrounded by large regional competitors with much higher fertility rates (India, Pakistan, etc). China has had conflict with one in the past (India). The other (Pakistan) is currently an economic and military ally of China owing to proximity and a common rival (India). But Pakistan’s government is hardly in control of its population which is growing rapidly. Throw Indonesia (also growing rapidly) into the mix and there are going to be a LOT MORE people competing for limited resources in and around China.

Productivity can boost an economy, but in the end you need new people and a new child today takes at least 20 years to become a productive worker and form a new household.

In addition, France has sided with Israel on several important issues, such as demanding that Iran's nuclear weapons program be halted, at all costs. However, according to NGO Monitor, the French government also funds many groups whose stances contradict its own tenets – radical leftist groups that actively demonize Israel, spreading incitement against Israelis and even advocating terror attacks.

In one case, a French court ruled against an NGO that sued French companies that were working on the Jerusalem Light Rail, claiming that the companies were violating French and international law by “abetting the occupation.” The court ruled against the Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) – which had funded the lawsuit with money it received from none other than the French government.

Several French NGOs, including AFPS, CFD-Terre Solidaire, Secours Catholique, and others receive millions of dollars from the French government, which they distribute to groups in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Nearly all these groups are radically anti-Israel, advocating a complete withdrawal of Israel from all of Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, the full repatriation of descendants of Arabs who fled Israel in 1948, reparations to the PA for “six decades of suffering,” and so on.

The influence of anti-Israel groups on the French government has been substantial, judging from the actions of French officials in Israel in recent months.

AFP reports that Khamenei told commanders of the Islamist Basij militia force in Tehran: "the Zionist regime (Israel) is a regime whose pillars are extremely shaky and is doomed to collapse." Responding to Israeli concerns over Iran's nuclear weapons program, Khamenei called Israel "the rabid dog of the region" and claimed Israel poses a threat to the world, not Iran. The Basij crowd responded with cries of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

Khamenei had insults for Israeli officials as well. Deputy Foreign Minister Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) on Tuesday backed previous statements that Israel could militarily act alone to defend itself from the Iranian nuclear threat.

Perhaps in response, Khamenei said "the title of human is not worthy of the leaders of the Zionist regime," adding that the Iranian response to a military action would be "a slap in the face they will never forget." Khamenei further said in a live state television broadcast that "any phenomenon that is created by force cannot endure," referring to Israel's numerous defensive wars fought to ensure the country's existence.

The Western alliance claims this is to test the members’ capability and teamwork, mainly for reasons of matching America’s commitment to the alliance, as well as keeping their edge after the Afghan mission is over. The upcoming series of war games comes amid widespread military spending cutbacks throughout NATO, in the wake of the expensive military interventions in places such as Libya and Afghanistan, which were a great drain on resources.

Rainer Rupp, a former German intelligence officer with the HVA, believes that the current exercises should be examined against the background of the Afghan experience and that the upcoming games have little to do with European security or keeping everyone ready for whatever scenarios may come.

There, he explains, NATO “could test its interoperability” just as well. However, now, “with NATO countries – especially the United States – leaving Afghanistan beaten like a dog with the tail between its legs, they need to project and show the world that they still have their claws sharpened.” Rupp sees the games as nothing more than “part of a continued effort of… intimidating nations that don’t follow voluntarily the US and European lead.”

Footage showed clouds of heavy smoke, billowing steam and waters roiling over the newly-formed crater. The newly-formed land is off the coast of Nishinoshima, a small, uninhabited island in the Ogasawara chain. It is within the seismically active Pacific "ring of fire".

Jim Dobbin, chairman of Parliament’s All Party Group on Gibraltar, said the heightened tensions in the Mediterranean meant it would only take a trigger-happy “madman” on either side to spark serious retaliation.

He highlighted an “extremely serious” armed standoff earlier this month when a Spanish patrol boat breached a security cordon in Gibraltar’s territorial waters then “rammed a Naval Police Vessel escorting a British Navy ship”.

As Mr Dobbin was issuing the warning, a Spanish survey ship was defying Royal Navy orders to leave Gibraltar's territorial waters. Gibraltar's government has asked London to make a protest to Madrid, and the Spanish Ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office. The Spanish boat has now left the Gibraltar waters.

Britain summoned the Spanish ambassador for a dressing down after the ocean survey vessel spent 20 hours defying the Royal Navy’s demands that it depart, escalating the diplomatic tensions over the Rock.

But Tory MP Colonel Bob Stewart, who was the British United Nations commander during the Bosnian war, said that if the Government is serious about defending Gibraltar’s sovereignty it should send major combat units to deter Spanish grandstanding. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch added: ‘The next time a Spanish ship enters Gibraltarian waters and refuses to leave after Royal Navy warnings we should fire on them.’

The long-standing dispute between Britain and Spain has flared up over the past two years. [Spanish] Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has blocked the Spanish-Gibraltarian border and staged numerous incursions into Gibraltarian waters.

And it’s causing parts of the market to behave strangely. Stocks of companies with weak balance sheets are rising twice as fast as stronger ones; junk borrowers get rates lower than their investment-grade counterparts did before the credit crisis; and initial public offerings are doubling on their first day of trading.

While in the minority, some investors say prices have climbed so high it’s possible to look ahead and see an ugly end. Laurence Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc, the biggest US money manager, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on November 12 that he feared a bubble and the Fed ought to quit buying so many securities.

“At some point we’ll have to pay the price of this,” said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer of Marketfield Asset Management LLC in New York. Among the woes Shaoul foresees: “higher inflation, higher interest rates, much more difficult business conditions.”

This maize, known as MON810, has been grown in South Africa for 15 years, where it “failed miserably”. But so as not to call the seed a complete waste, Monsanto and Bill Gates are now pushing it into countries like Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya — countries that need agricultural help.

“Monsanto got the science completely wrong on this one. Independent biosafety scientists have discovered that the inheritance of resistance in African stem borers is a dominant, not recessive, trait as erroneously assumed,” explained the Director of the ACB Miriam Mayet. “Hence the insect resistance management strategies that Monsanto developed, and accepted by our regulators, based on these erroneous assumptions, were utterly ineffective.”

What this means, simply, is that pests in South Africa developed a massive resistance to the chemicals in the corn, annihilating the one prominent argument for GM crops, that it is resistant to insects. The corn was such a disaster that Monsanto willingly compensated farmers for the pesticides they had to spray on their crops to further fight the insects. Compensation from Monsanto? Weird.

Now, to not waste the waste of a seed, Monsanto has donated the MON810 technology to a “philanthropic” venture of the Gates Foundation and Monsanto called Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), and they’ve done it royalty-free.

Here is how the pods work: when passengers are ready to leave a terminal, they will be forced into the pods, one at a time. Each passenger must remain in the pod until an electronic voice gives them permission to leave and the door opens. After passing through a pod, passengers may not re-enter the terminal without going through security again.

Currently at most airports, TSA agents stand at terminal exits for safety purposes. The idea is that these new pods will replace such agents, therefore saving money and increasing security. The pods are already being used in the Syracuse International Airport.

Syracuse Airport Commissioner Christina Callahan said, “We need to be vigilant and maintain high security protocol at all times. These portals were designed and approved by TSA which is important.” At Callahan’s airport, the post cost $60 million to install. Of course, some level of security is necessary in any international airport. However, there is a balance to be struck between making passengers safe and making them feel imprisoned or violated.

In fact, it is being alleged that this manipulation was a significant reason for why the official unemployment rate dipped sharply just before the last presidential election. The numbers that the American people depend upon to make important decisions are being faked. But should we be surprised by this? After all, Barack Obama has been caught telling dozens of major lies over the past five years. At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of his mouth.

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington. The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

"Inflation Is Low" is another lie that government officials love to tell. In particular, the boys and girls over at the Federal Reserve love to try to convince all of us that inflation is super low because it gives them an excuse to recklessly print lots more money. But anyone that goes to the grocery store or pays bills on a regular basis knows that there is plenty of inflation in the economy. And if we were being given honest numbers, they would show that. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the US inflation rate was still calculated the exact same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.

"The US National Debt Is Under Control" - the mainstream media would have us believe that the budget deficit is now under control and the US national debt is not a significant problem any longer. But that is not the truth. The truth is that we are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in all of US history combined. Our financial system is far more vulnerable than we are being told. We are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and when this bubble bursts it is going to be an absolutely spectacular disaster. Please don't believe the mainstream media or the politicians when they promise you that everything is going to be okay.

This follows the visit of the Russian warship, “Varyag,” which arrived in Alexandria earlier this month according to Ahram Online, two days before Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Cairo.

Egypt’s moves to improve relations with Russia and Saudi Arabia are seen as a way to counter US pressure and the recent partial aid freeze. The freeze was implemented as a result of the military coup and crackdown on former president Mohamed Morsi and his supporters.

Saudi Arabia has been flexing its military might in the midst of regional sectarian tensions and worry about Iran’s nuclear program. Saudi Arabia is currently holding a drill on its soil with French forces, focusing on mountain warfare.

The decision by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) to open itself to a possible future alliance with the Left Party has unsettled coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, and is a ticking time bomb that could topple her third government before the next general election, in 2017.

The SPD has until now ruled out forming a national government with the left-wing Left Party because it regards the latter's policy pledges as unrealistic. For example, the ultra-pacifist party, which has its roots in the communist SED party that ruled the former East Germany, wants an end to all foreign military missions, a ban on weapons exports, the withdrawal or destruction of all US nuclear missiles still stationed in Germany, and the dissolution of NATO.

For the SPD, the grand coalition is the last stage before what it hopes will be the biggest shake-up in German politics since the SPD-Green government came to power in 1998, which ended 16 years of calcifying conservative rule under former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Even though many leading SPD members are trying to play down the importance of last week's decision, it will affect the everyday working of the upcoming coalition.

Yet Merkel has more reason to be worried than her triumphant election win on September 22 would have suggested. Her coalition with the SPD will have an overwhelming parliamentary majority, but her fate will be chained to an SPD leader who is already preparing the ground for the end of the Merkel Era.

They held signs outside the doors of more than 200 mainstream outlets like ABC, FOX, NBC and the BBC, urging viewers to get information from alternative news sources and challenging them to actually cover the protests. There was virtually no MSM reporting on the protests.

“March Against Mainstream Media is more than just a protest,” the organization’s website reads, “It is an attack against the credibility of the mainstream media in an attempt to steer its viewers away from its lies and towards alternative media sources.”

Its goal was not only to draw attention to the omissions of the mainstream media; it was to confront them directly. With thousands protesting the media right outside its doors, would it report the event? Or would it willingly leave the majority of the population completely unaware?

“The news source that is not showing the protests is the news source you have to stop getting your news from. And the news source that IS showing the protests is where you should look for news from now on,” says the site. All but one traditional outlet chose to ignore the protest. The Seattle Times did report the event, though it simply said that a small group of protesters had gathered with flags, signs and megaphones and shouted slogans. Unsurprisingly, new media has covered the story extensively.